Book Orders Away

It's a little soon to declare victory, but everything looks good for the BookMongering! People made orders -- seven people, even, and only one of them was me! Our order went in on schedule (dropped in the mail yesterday on the way home from music class). $140 in books plus the 500 bonus points made for 640 points, plus 4 free books. The basic cycle went like this:

• Pick a due date.
• 15 days before the date, set up the due dates in the online store and make the flyers available.
• 10-14 days from when you want to mail it, send home flyers and a little instruction sheet. Don't discount the online option, each online order is a $3 bonus and online orders are wayyyy less work for you :).
• 2-3 days before the due date, send home a reminder.
• Check the accumulation of coupons and bonuses, see if anything is expiring before the next order. Make sure the teacher uses those bonus bucks :)
• Due date: collect the checks and orders together. People will make mistakes in their total, in their quantities, etc.
• Ask any follow-up questions and make sure everything is accurate.
• Enter paper orders online.
• Send a confirmation e-mail to anyone who turned in a paper order.
• Make the order
• Mail the checks
• Wait
• Unpack the books and send home the goodies!

Book Order Minder

For my first-ever volunteer job for the preschool, I signed up to manage the book orders process.

I loved these as a kid, I love to read, and it seemed natural enough. Being techie types, we also volunteered to be on the tech committee, we go to the meetings, and I seem to be dragging laundry and dirty toys home every so often. It's a co-op, there's work to be done. The book orders thing, though, is a job I signed up for. Jumped up for, just about, when the opportunity came my way. Books. Books!

It seems to be a fairly easy job. Make some flyers, print some things out, collect orders back again, place them, divide the books when they come back again. Families get books, the teachers get points to use on books, there are promos and coupons and bonuses of various kinds. Fun!

Scholastic.com is a nice website as long as you don't try to use it with Firefox for Mac (what's up with that?), there's a nice range of books from cartoon characters to award winners, the process is easy (I spelled it all out in the little flyer! I made little boxes with book recommendations and instructions to set off the friendly welcoming text that Mr. Mother and I composed and signed!). Now all I need are some book orders.....and no one has put in any orders. I am taping little reminders to each cubby tomorrow (decorated by Ms.1) and I hope that will bring them pouring out of the woodwork. Otherwise, I guess I'll look forward to the November order season.

We got hit with a whole lot of different things the same week I sent out the order forms, and I imagine that ordering the latest Pinkalicious (What IS pinkalicious? Why does she have so many books about her? Is this like asking whether Nancy is really all that Fancy, or just cluttered? Doesn't rhyme, can't be true. Got it.) books pales in comparison to figuring out a Halloween costume, prepping for the two preschool Halloween parties they're having (there's the room party, you see, and the school party), plus the BundtCakePopcornCookieDough Sale, plus the three infectious disease alerts, a birthday party invite, and a cognitive development study to sign off on. Maybe if I can get on the little monthly calendar....because, you know, the solution to failing to rise above the din is to just Talk A Whole Lot Louder (just ask my girls today....yeesh).

Cranky About "Buy Expensive Knicknacks" Fundraisers

At the risk of alienating half the parents out there, I'm going to reveal a secret....you know those fundraisers where you take home a catalog of stuff and then you're supposed to ask your friends and neighbors to buy some of your random whatnots? They kinda make me cranky. I may smile and tuck the circular into my bag, next to the calendar with the room meetings written on it and the memos about who has impetigo and the description of my child's latest skinned knee. I might even nod eagerly as you explain the details of how I do what I'm supposed to do. But inside, I'm rolling my eyes.

On the one hand, we have a duty to raise the money and P-A-R-T-I-C-I-P-A-T-E. Education is underfunded everywhere, and maybe someone really will appreciate that big tin of popcorn. Maybe you just helped them cross a random relative off their gift list or avoid a trip to the store. Better to spend our money in ways that benefit the school than send the same amount to some corporation that uses it to chop down baby seal habitat or something. But wait, that implies a similarity in price. Oh no.

The prices are often ridiculous. Am I really going to ask my friends and neighbors and co-workers to buy a $22 cake? No. I don't know what kind of money they make, particularly, but I'm pretty sure that some of them are struggling to make ends meet and asking them to shell out what might be several hours wages for a cake is just rude.

I can handle all kinds of fundraisers....a truck wash, a snack bar, a bake sale, a garage sale, a food drive, a penny jar, bingo night, spaghetti feed, cake walk, car raffle...bring it on. But the big wad of gift wrap and that tasteful collection of Santa bags and tags makes me a little crazy. I don't like to pay retail for seasonal tchotchkes. Pardon me while I spellcheck that. I kept adding more consonants, but it didn't seem to be helping. Tchktchotchkkes. There we go. Yes, I like to get that stuff for fifty cents in January. I like it even better when they pay me to take it home.

I was reasonably good at the candy bar sales in high school -- just carry a box of candy to each class, put in on my desk, and if anyone wanted one, they knew the drill. Girl Scout cookies, Camp Fire candy, usually people were reasonably happy with the product and didn't mind giving me a few bucks for something tasty. Roadside barbeque chicken, ushering at football games, making tortillas at fairs...no problem. I will work my butt off in the rain, I will work late hours, I will stand on my feet all day...as long as I don't have to ask the person in the next office to buy a plastic snow globe.

And here's the darkest bit of the secret: part of my crankiness about these sales is that I'm not good at them. I like to win. I want my kid to take home the prize. Some people are born salespeople, and everyone loves to buy things from them. There's no awkwardness, no sense of risked friendship or sociability. They like to sell, I like to buy.

But I am not that salesperson for this kind of stuff. Some folks go for the subtle approach -- put the offer on their FB status, hang the sign-up sheet in the lunchroom. That's ok by me. But subtle and relaxed is not going to win this thing, because there are Salespeople parents out there and I am not one of them. My 3-year-old is not going to get a big gold star because I signed up everyone on the planet for a full-price magazine subscription. We are going to lose this contest, and I like to win. There, I said it.

Anyone want to give me $22 for a bundt cake?